My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.
I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Monday, August 24, 2009

More on the Swedish blood libel....

Silence is golden according to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, the government official who insists his country's ambassador to Israel must refrain from expressing an opinion on virulent anti-Semitic accusations in the Swedish left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet. Accusations intended as a blood-libel against all Jews and Israelis everywhere.

The article's author Donald Boström freely admits that he has no evidence of any of his allegations but says it is up to Jews and Israelis to prove themselves innocent. An interesting if not entirely original twist - Jews are guilty until they prove themselves innocent. The basic tenets of democracy do not appear to be familiar to either Boström or Aftonbladet.

Much of the material in Boström's article came from a book he published in 2001 Inshallah which was jointly financed by the Swedish Foreign Ministry and various other government-backed organizations.

A worrying pattern emerges of governmental, church and trade union involvement in officially-sanctioned demonization of Israel.

This is no one-off phenomenon. Rampant Swedish media distortion and the tacit and blatant anti-Semitism expressed in various Swedish governmental and quasi-governmental organizations can be charted with the utmost clarity in an NGO Monitor report "A Clouded EU Presidency: Swedish Funding for NGO Rejectionism."

THE RESULTS of media distortion and constant demonizing of Jews and Israelis are felt in Sweden all the time - most recently Saturday in a soccer match involving Jewish youth club IF Hakoah, in which spectators raced onto the pitch during and after the match to assault the Hakoah players for the crime of being Jewish.

One problem, however: at this particular match, none of the Hakoah players happened to be Jewish. Not that it mattered in a climate of hate cloaked in government silence.

Other aspects of Swedish silence that are equally worrying if one steps back and examines the broader canvas. Sweden is one of the world's largest per capita donors to Palestinian Arab welfare. This funding comes in the form of tax revenues paid dutifully by hard-working Swedes lucky enough to still have a job, to the tune of about of 700 million kronor per annum and increasing yearly.

And despite the millions that he takes from Swedish citizens to give to Palestinians, Bildt deliberately chooses not to condition these payments on the Palestinians' release of the only Jew in the Gaza Strip: the young Gilad Schalit who was captured by Hamas 1200 days ago and has since not been allowed contact with his family, legal representation or visits by the Red Cross - itself a gross violation of his human rights.

Bildt has every reason to be tight-lipped. Talking would put Sweden's decades-old policy of selective silence in jeopardy. There's too much at stake if people start asking questions. Swedes might start demanding that some of their tax money be spent on their own welfare rather than on Palestinians.

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My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.
I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)